Bits Bucket for January 10, 2016
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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The New York Times
International Business
China’s Hunger for Commodities Wanes, and Pain Spreads Among Producers
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
January 9, 2016
Chile is expanding its largest open-pit copper mine below the northern desert to dig up 1.7 billion additional tons of minerals, even as metal prices plummet around the globe.
India is building railroad lines that crisscross the country to connect underused coal mines with growing urban populations, threatening to dump more resources into an already glutted market.
Australia is increasing natural gas production by roughly 150 percent over the next four years, as energy companies build half a dozen export terminals to serve dwindling demand.
Across the commodities landscape, this worrisome mismatch mainly traces back to the same source: China.
For years, China voraciously gobbled up all manner of metals, crops and fuels as its economy rapidly expanded. Countries and companies, fueled by cheap debt, aggressively broadened their operations, betting that China’s appetite would grow unabated.
Now everything has changed.
China’s economy is slumping. American companies, struggling to pay their debts as interest rates rise, must keep producing. All the excess is crushing prices, hurting commodity-dependent economies across emerging markets like Brazil and Venezuela and developed countries like Australia and Canada.
The geopolitical and financial consequences of this shift have shaken investor confidence. Concerns over global growth intensified in recent days, when weakness in China prompted a stock sell-off around the world.
The commodities hangover, the dark side of a decade-long boom, could last for a while.
Multibillion-dollar investment decisions made years ago on big projects, like the oil sands fields in Canada and iron ore mines in West Africa, are just getting up and running. Facing huge costs, companies cannot simply shut off projects. So the excess could take years to work through.
The flood of raw materials is pressuring prices, prompting a painful shakeout. Oil companies have laid off an estimated 250,000 workers worldwide. Alpha Natural Resources and other American coal mining companies have filed for bankruptcy protection.
Saudi Arabia, a giant energy economy, has had to tap the credit markets as its financial reserves dwindle. Venezuela, an oil-rich nation that went on a spending spree, is struggling to meet $10 billion in debt obligations this year, since 95 percent of export earnings depend on crude.
Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, likened the reversal to a rainfall that first relieved a drought but then created a flood. “Producers ended up being their own worst enemies,” he said. “No one ever worried they would produce too much, but that is exactly what has happened and gotten them into this mess.”
Lower energy and material prices are often welcomed by consumers. An energy glut has allowed American households to save hundreds of dollars a year on gasoline and heating oil.
But economists worry that the commodity mess reflects a weakening global economy, lowering the value of trade worldwide and perhaps even pushing some countries into the same kind of deflationary spiral that has hampered the Japanese economy for decades. Global turmoil last summer, stemming from China, prompted the United States to delay raising interest rates until the end of last year.
“Lower oil prices have not proven to be as stimulative as economic theory once had it,” said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and vice chairman of the IHS consultancy. “The question is what are weak commodity prices telling us: Is it overinvestment in the past, or signaling a weaker global economy forward? My own feeling is the answer is both.”
Commodities have always been subject to booms and busts, rising and falling with the global economy. But China and the cheap debt have changed the equation in some ways.
China’s rapid growth led to an increase in crude oil consumption to 7.5 million barrels a day in 2007, from 5.5 million barrels a day in 2003. It is now the world’s biggest importer of crude, having surpassed the United States. Other commodities have followed a similar pattern.
The increased demand fueled a surge in prices; copper tripled and zinc doubled over the five-year period ending in 2007. Americans and Europeans found themselves in what amounted to a bidding war for products as diversified as gasoline and coffee.
Then the financial crisis hit in 2008. While the global economy faltered, China continued to grow, buying ever more commodities from developing countries. Those economies, in turn, flourished from the infusion of money.
Peru, with its big bounty of copper and other metals, used its newfound riches to expand its middle class, creating a boom in shopping centers and apartment houses in its capital, Lima. Lagos, Nigeria, experienced the same, benefiting from the high price of oil.
The low interest rates, which had been cut to the bone because of the crisis, fueled the boom. The Brazilian energy company Petrobras accumulated $128 billion in debt, doubling its annual borrowing costs over the last three years.
Then the commodity story started to change when Chinese growth slipped.
In 2015, commodity prices had their worst year since the financial crisis and global slowdown. Nickel, iron ore, palladium, platinum and copper all declined by 25 percent or more. Oil prices have declined by more than 60 percent over the last 18 months. Even corn, oat and wheat prices have sunk.
And the commodity slide has continued into this year. At just over $30 a barrel, oil has reached levels not seen in over a decade.
The bust is made all the more pernicious by rising interest rates, as the Federal Reserve changes gears. Companies that took advantage of the cheap debt to increase production are now stuck with a big bill that will be difficult to cover.
…
“Raw material producers invest according to current prices without realizing how those prices might affect future demand,” said Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a consultancy. “Now that the demand is declining because of high prices, they have too much capacity, and once it’s built, you can’t unbuild it.”
…
Apologies if this was posted yesterday, but here’s a story on the demolition of a high rise building in China, recently built and never used.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-09/china-goes-full-keynesian-tard-demolishes-never-used-just-built-skyscraper
According to the story the building was built just last year and was demolished because it was unoccupied too long.
Seems fishy to me. I’m guessing that the construction was so shoddy that no one would want to move in, not that there were any potential tenants.
Sooner or later all highrise construction returns to ground level. Shoddily constructed high rises come down sooner.
Maybe they forgot to get a building permit.
The ghost cities are a few years old and at this stage the decay has started and is about to accelerate. Therefore, it’s likely the cost of maintenance will become so high demolition will cheaper.
It can’t be cheap to maintain entire cities full of empty buildings!
That is perhaps one of the first of many Keynesian stimulus projects to come in China, which will be necessary to clear the landscape of myriad massive unused high-rise construction projects –the same ones that sucked massive amounts of natural resources and manpower down the drain over the past decade.
One problem with such Keynesian ditch-digging and refilling is that the work product typically fails to satisfy any human wants and needs. Thus one of the primary functions of a free market economy fails to occur.
The downside to a non Keynesian approach in the age of automation and self driving cars is massive unemployment social unrest and crime. Not to mention eventual collapse of the world economy due to lac of demand.
I don’t buy it. The folks who spend their lives constructing unneeded buildings or otherwise digging and filling in unneeded ditches could redirect their efforts to providing something of value to their fellow man if the central planners hadn’t allocated the labor to the ditch projects.
While “broken window” economics won’t fix things, automation will create massive worldwide unemployment, so much so that Economists are envisioning a world where the majority join the FSA. Even STEMmers will feel the bite as the minimum competence bar will continue to rise.
“China Goes Full Keynesian-tard”
So the Ruskies don’t like Keynes. Interesting.
Governments did this,that,reinvested
Less gov =more fun
The descriptions in the article of ongoing overinvestment in commodities production infrastructure into the face of a crash offer a classic example of what happens when the global central banking establishment keeps the punch bowl spiked with alcohol for too long into an expansion. Now that prices have collapsed, those engaged in the construction projects can choose between halting the work and taking a total loss or completing the work to only recover a small fraction of anticipated revenues which will not cover loan repayment costs.
The latter choice will also serve to further drive down commodities prices.
“not cover loan repayment”
Exactly. They will spend every last penny trying to keep a losing operation going. The loans will not be repaid.
“The loans will not be repaid.”
Let’s take a look at this:
The value of the equity that is represented by prices has declined because the prices that give value to the equity has declined. This is what happens in a world where price = equity.
Also in this world of price = equity is price = wealth; In such a world reducing prices reduces wealth.
But reducing wealth reduces the backing that gives value to the debt that was taken on and was backed by the prices that gave value to the equity.
Which means: Not only is wealth immediately destroyed by declining prices that gave value to equity but wealth is destined to be destroyed by the destruction of the backing that gives value to the debt.
Which means: While the financial suffering by the holders of equity is immediate the financial suffering by the holders of the debt that is backed by the equity is not; The financial suffering by the debt holders is something that will come about when accountants decide it will come about. IOW, Mr. Market, via his use of the price, determines immediately the value of equity but it is later - perhaps way later on - that accountants determine the value of debt.
So there is a double-whammy involved here: The first whammy is the immediate write down of wealth as determined by prices, then comes the second whammy of the write down of wealth as determined by accountants.
If it looks as if prices are the primary factors that determine wealth then that’s because they are.
If it looks as if debt is used to support prices then that’s because it does.
If looks as if the value of debt-backing equity gives value to debt then that’s because it does.
If it looks as if prices, equity, and debt are all tied together and each one gives value to the other two in some sort of circle or loop then that’s because that’s the way it is.
If it looks as if this entire economic situation is nuts then that’s because it is.
It ain’t over until the accountant says “poof”.
Hence the need for extend-and-pretend accounting rules…
“But economists worry that the commodity mess reflects a weakening global economy, lowering the value of trade worldwide…”
Ya think?
The Maritime Executive
Shipping Gets a Bearish Start to 2016
Bear File photo credit Eva Kröcher
By MarEx 2016-01-08 20:06:43
Multiple segments of the shipping industry reported bearish news Friday in what looks to have been a tough first week for 2016.
Following weakening indicators for China’s industrial output and a series of sharp drops on the Chinese exchanges, the benchmark Baltic Dry Index fell to another historic low at 429 points on Friday, down from over 10,000 just five years ago.
The drop has affected multiple shipping firms with exposure to the bulker sector. Operator Scorpio Bulkers was downgraded by analysts Stifel on Thursday, just days after Scorpio’s announcement of the sale of five Capesizes for $170 million. Stocks fell Friday for U.S.-listed Safe Bulkers (down 10 percent) and Navios Maritime (down 10 percent), and Oslo-listed Golden Ocean Group was watchlisted with a drop of 7 percent.
Shanghai International Shipping Institute has predicted a wave of bankruptcies for bulker operators in China; Deutsche Bank recently warned that the forced sale of ships could push bulker owners into bankruptcy as the firms approach the limits of their debt contract loan-to-value ratios.
A Deutsche Bank analyst recently told media that poor investor sentiment regarding bulker carriers has also negatively affected the share prices of tanker firms, which fell over 10 percent this week despite rising day rates and solid long-term chartering.
Container rates on key Asia-Northern Europe and Asia-U.S. routes continued recent volatility with a sharp 25 percent drop on the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index on Friday, reflecting continued overcapacity despite the record number of idled container ships. Rates for Asia-Europe and Asia-Mediterranean had doubled to values over $1200 per TEU on December 31, as multiple carriers implemented steep General Rate Increases ahead of the Chinese New Year and post-Christmas slow season. But trade analysts Drewry forecast Thursday that the end-of-year rate peaks were unlikely to hold and predicted a slow decline in revenue through 2016.
Oil prices have continued to plummet, down 10 percent in a week with Brent crude reaching a decadal low of $32 a barrel on Friday. But upstream producers show few signs of slowing the supply in response, Goldman Sachs says. And with Iran’s oil exports expected to rise shortly with the lifting of sanctions, investors appear bearish on crude futures. Many traders are reportedly buying options for future sale values of as little as $25 per barrel, suggesting that they expect to profit from spot prices below even that level.
The oil price drop has put ever-increasing pressure on upstream firms, including offshore drilling contractors like Transocean and offshore supply firms like Singapore-based Ezra Holdings, which issued a loss warning Friday for the most recent quarter. So far, an estimated 250,000 jobs have been lost worldwide due to staff reductions in oil and gas production.
In shipbuilding, the top three Korean yards Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering reported combined annual losses of $6.66 billion on Wednesday, in what Korean news described as a new record. The amount is about four times their combined loss in 2014.
“It is the first time ever that the shipbuilding industry has chalked up such a dismal result,” one industry insider told Yonhap news agency. “The situation in 2015 was worse than during the country’s foreign exchange crisis in the late 1990s.”
…
robots and computers don’t need large houses cars and entertainment. They don’t eat out. They don’t wear clothes.
Any thoughts on why China’s plunge protection measures appear to have failed last week?
China’s Plunge Protection Team Bought ¥1.8 Trillion In Stocks In 2015
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/10/2016 12:06
There was a palpable sense of disappointment among US traders who woke up this morning, expecting China to have announced another major stimulus - whether an RRR or full-blown interest rate cut - following Saturday’s announcement that after 46 consecutive months of wholesale deflation, not to mention a historic market rout, China had not engaged in another round of monetary, or at least fiscal, and very much self-defeating stimulus.
The mood turned even more sour when the same traders, used to getting bailed out by central banks or nation states, read the tape from the overnight Bloomberg, according to which China’s premier was quoted by Beijing News as vowing that there would be “no more strong stimulus on the economy”.
Just as bad, the prime minister added that China wouldn’t seek strong stimulus or flood the economy with too much money to expand demand, Beijing News quoted Li Keqiang as saying in Taiyuan city.
Li then added that China will try its best to develop new business models and create new drivers for the economy, which naturally is bad news for a market which is used to the old, conventional form of “growth”: throwing trillions in cash at the problem and hoping something sticks.
Finally, and most confusing, was Li saying that China must take concrete measures to ease overcapacity in the steel and coal sectors.
Why this is confusing is that just on Friday, CRI reported that China “will provide full support for the coal and steel sectors, which suffer serious overcapacity, to help them out of their current difficulties, according to an official statement issued Thursday. Since last year, overcapacity in those sectors became a prominent problem due to weak demand at home and abroad and dropping commodity prices on the global market, the statement cited Premier Li Keqiang as saying at a meeting on the topic.”
This, to us at least, sounds like a promise of another bailout and quite contrary to the Beijing News report.
But where things get even more confusing is that despite intervening in the market, as it did on two occasions last week to prop up stocks, the PBOC is now increasingly shifting away from an activist approach toward the Chinese stock market.
Which begs the question: why spend all those billions to prop up the stock market in 2015 if China will no longer do this? And what will happen to the US if, as many expect, China not only allows the Yuan to depreciate aggressively in hopes of boosting inflation (even if all it will achieve is to stimulate social unrest) but steps aside the next time the market crashes.
But how many billions (or trillions) did China’s so-called “national team” spend to prop up stocks in recent months? According to Goldman not less than CNY1.8 trillion in the June-November period.
…
Millbrae, CA Housing Prices Dive 5% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/millbrae-ca/market-trends/
“New figures that show 42 per cent of Millennials, the generation born between 1980 and the mid-1990s, have turned to alternative finance including payday lenders and pawnshops in the past five years. ”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/more-than-40-of-yoing-people-millennials-use-payday-loans-or-pawnshops-a6802206.html
The young people and also people of other ages into crypto are into crypto currency as well.
Let us know when the bitcoin atm card suddenly stops working.
http://i.imgur.com/FAVyM.gif
Is she single?
Ask Lola.
Rumor has it the HBB bloggers love fractional reserve banking.
Reckon it’s true.
V is for Voluntary
C is for Cookie.
Millennials also propelled a Soros-backed snake oil salesman promising “hope ‘n change” into the White House. The stupid, it burns….
“The fact that they may harbor anti-Jewish sentiment doesn’t matter much.” MightyMike 1-9-16.
OMG! We are so screwed!
From July of 2015 …
“Earth’s Most Famous Climate Scientist Issues Bombshell Sea Level Warning”
“In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels.
“The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.”
OMG, a sea level rise of ten feet in as little as fifty years! Think of how much water it would take to do this.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/sea_level_study_james_hansen_issues_dire_climate_warning.html
But wait! It gets worse, much MUCH worse …
From September 2015, just three months later and from the same guy …
“All eyes on the oceans—James Hansen and sea level rise”
“While many of us discuss the catastrophic impacts of droughts, flooding, and dwindling food supply related to climate change, the authors emphasize that up to 5 meters of sea level rise may happen over the course of 50 years, carrying with it the “economic and social cost of losing functionally all coastal cities…” Seeing as the more conservative IPCC report puts this estimate closer to 1 meter by the year 2100, this news is making an impact.”
“… up to 5 meters of sea level rise may happen over the course of 50 years”
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-eyes-oceansjames-hansen-sea.html
(Note: Five meters is over fifteen feet.)
So in July this guy’s prediction for the planet’s sea level rise was ten feet over the next fifty years and in September - only three months later - his prediction for the planet’s sea level rise jumped up to over fifteen feet in the next fifty years.
This - these predictions - are from “Earth’s most famous climate scientist”.
And if anyone anywhere dares to question any of this then this questioner is immediately and automatically labeled a “denialest”.
Magic 8 ball?
Well that should be easy to verify in the next decade.
“Well that should be easy to verify in the next decade.”
It’s easy to verify that this clown is talking out his @ss and has been since at least 1988 and you Useful Idiots are eating it up with a spoon.
“In 1988, Hansen told (sympathetic) journalist Bob Reiss that the West Side Highway in Manhattan would be underwater within 20 or 30 years”
The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water
Spectacularly Poor Climate Science At NASA
Dr. James Hansen of NASA, has been the world’s leading promoter of the idea that the world is headed towards “climate disaster.” There is little evidence to back this up.
Yet in 1999, he made it quite clear that past climate was not stable, and that there was little evidence to support that idea that the climate was becoming unstable.
In that same 1999 report, he showed that US temperatures peaked in 1934, and declined through the rest of the century.
In 1989, NOAA and the UK’s leading expert agreed with Hansen that US had not warmed.
February 04, 1989
Last week, scientists from the United States Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that a study of temperature readings for the contiguous 48 states over the last century showed there had been no significant change in average temperature over that period.
Dr. (Phil) Jones said in a telephone interview today that his own results for the 48 states agreed with those findings.
In 1988, Hansen told (sympathetic) journalist Bob Reiss that the West Side Highway in Manhattan would be underwater within 20 or 30 years (2008-2018). In 2001, he confirmed and reiterated that claim.
While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Other NASA climate failures
Dr. Hansen is not the only climate scientist at NASA making spectacular mispredictions. Five years ago another NASA scientist predicted a possible ice-free Arctic in 2012
NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?
Arctic ice extent is now within a couple percent of normal, and Alaska has the most extensive sea ice ever recorded.
stevengoddard.wordpress.com/spectacularly-poor-climate-science-at-nasa/ - 217k -
Warmists gonna warm, it’s the only song on their jukebox
When that wall o’ water comes
a-barralin’ down your street
don’t envy me my surfboard as you drown
cuz they told you it was comin’
but you just kept on bummin’
that F450 pickup all over town
Help me with more verses! Country song of the apocalypse.
When your McMansion gets McFlooded,
And your lift kit lets you down,
Cause all the roads are flooded,
To the chicken wing side of town
My marginal tax rate’s
Up to eighty percent
Dug through my pockets
And couldn’t find one cent
Soros and Obama tell me
That I gotta pay
To delay this warmism
One more day
Oceans are rising
With middle class taxpayer tears
Not that it matters
Cuz I’ll be dead in forty years
Brilliant! Now we just need a rousing chorus.
O B A M A
What else do I have to say?
Obama
(clap clap clap)
Obama…
Plano, TX Housing Market Craters; Prices Plunge 14% YoY As Housing Correction Gears Up Nationwide
http://www.movoto.com/plano-tx/market-trends/
Plano is not crashing. Prices are going up. Lots of jobs moving to town.
A 14% decline in prices isn’t necessarily “crashing”. Prices are merely falling.
Anyone want to dig up Al Gore’s predictions from 10 years ago?
Most of us should be dead and underwater by now.
All this worrying about the effects of catastrophic climate change should help take everyone’s mind off the ongoing collapse in global commodities trade and production.
Hansen has past his tipping point.
Anyway, since we’ve already supposedly had a temperature rise bigger than what we are supposedly going to get in the next 50 years, all the coastal cities are already gone. Bangladesh is vanished and Greenland is once again covered in forest.
Science is a big conspiracy to take away our guns and trucks.
Great science going on in the medical profession getting 15 percent addicted to opiates and 65 percent obese.
Science is a big conspiracy to take away our cheeseburgers.
“Science is a big conspiracy to take away our cheeseburgers.”
“Which is why Shukla generously rewards its president – himself – with a salary of $330,000 for a 28 hour week and his wife (who works full time) another $166,000.”
by James Delingpole22 Sep 2015
George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla is a lead author with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and winner of numerous awards including the International Meteorological Organization Prize, the Rossby Medal of the American Meteorological Society, and the Padma Shri National Award from the President of India. He is currently president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society and a professor of Climate Dynamics.
For his expertise, Shukla is amply rewarded by George Mason University with a salary over $250,000 a year.
Apparently, though, this isn’t a full time job. It can’t be – because on top of this salary, from 2012 to 2014, Shukla appears to have paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for his part-time work via his non-profit Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES).
IGES is an organization which gets almost all its income from US taxpayers – last year a whopping $3.8 million – via institutions including the National Science Foundation, NOAA and NASA. The organization’s declared aim is to “improve understanding and prediction of the variations of the Earth’s climate through scientific research on climate variability and climate predictability, and to share both the fruits of this research and the tools necessary to carry out this research with society as a whole.”
A tough job, clearly, but someone’s got to do it. Which is why Shukla generously rewards its president – himself – with a salary of $330,000 for a 28 hour week and his wife (who works full time) another $166,000.
Science is a cloak worn by many a con artist.
Religion is another such cloak, and politics is a close third.
Good morning from cool overcast OC!
It will pay off to diversify both in Bitcoin and precious metals.
Worlds largest bank bets in gold, not Bitcoin, shuns its own fiat.
https://news.bitcoin.com/worlds-biggest-bank-bets-gold-shuns-2016s-top-currency/
All your Bitcoin are belong to us.
Maybe not all. Only 85% is in China we hear.
I like to think of the word FOCUS as Follow One Course Until Successful.
I am traveling this weekend and was watching TV this morning. Trump was interviewed and spoke about the dangers of a stock bubble and how we are getting a bad deal trading with China. I recall he has talked about the Federal Reserve blowing up bubbles not that long ago. What have the other candidates said on these subjects?
So far, Hillary has only said Thank You. We still remember how the Fed banks bought her the NY Senate seat.
Ted Cruz’s wife gave him a stern look when he was about to open his mouth.
Yeb Bush said his brother tried really hard to keep bubbles safe.
Rubio is waiting on Adelson’s response.
Bernie says he would make the bubbles even bigger so that even the poor people are inside them.
Barney Sanders is pro-debt slavery.
Poor people would stink up the bubble.
Falling prices my friend….. falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is the only cure for poor people.
Mark Steyn has a good article on the Trump phenomenon, most notably the Vermont rally. Lots of good points and some funny stuff as well:
http://www.steynonline.com/7408/notes-on-a-phenomenon
THE VENUE: “In recent cycles, the American electoral system has diminished and degraded itself by retreating into turnout-model reductionism and seriously competing only over a handful of purple states. Even if he’s only doing it as a massive head-fake, Trump understands the importance of symbolism: By going into Berniestan, he’s saying he’s going for every voter and he’s happy to play down the other guy’s half of the field.”
BACKSTAGE: I did check out the action backstage, and I’ll say this: It was unlike any other candidate event I’ve been to. By comparison with, say, presidential campaigns such as Lamar Alexander’s or Orrin Hatch’s, Trump is very lightly staffed, and entirely unmanaged. Twenty minutes before the event, backstage is usually a whirl of activity with minions pretending to look busy and frantically tippy-tapping away on their phones over some vital matter or other. Deputy speechwriters and assistant campaign managers bustle about saying things like, “Mike’s seen the Egyptian Prime Minister’s response to the Secretary of State, so we’re working on a sentence to add to the nuclear-proliferation section.” There’s none of that around Trump. He’s meandering around back there shooting the breeze, posing for pics, totally relaxed - and so are his press secretary and campaign manager, too. If you’ve seen any of those inside-the-campaign movies, from Robert Redford in The Candidate to George Clooney in Ides of March, it looks all wrong: There’s far too few people, and there’s none of the fake busyness.
What is “authenticity” in contemporary politics? Is it a man who parlayed a routine Congressional career into a lucrative gig at Lehman Brothers presenting himself as the son of a mailman? Or is it a billionaire with a supermodel wife dropping the pretense that he’s no different from you stump-toothed losers in the rusting double-wides? Trump’s lack of pandering extends to America, too. He doesn’t do the this-is-the-greatest-country-in-the-history-of-countries shtick that Mitt did last time round. He isn’t promising, like Marco Rubio, a “second American century”. His pitch is that the American dream is dead - which, for many Americans, it is. In 1980, Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” was an aberration - a half-decade blip in three decades of post-war US prosperity that had enabled Americans with high school educations to lead middle-class lives in a three-bedroom house on a nice-sized lot in an agreeable neighborhood. In 2015, for many Americans, “malaise” is not a blip, but a permanent feature of life that has squeezed them out of the middle class. They’re not in the mood for bromides about second American centuries: They’d like what’s left of their own lifespan to be less worse.”
Good piece by Steyn.
So the neocons are slowly warming to Trump?
Like Denarys Targarian warmed up to her new Kahl on their honeymoon…
Winning over Steyn is a big deal. And if I recall didn’t Denarys come to be quite enraptured with that big goon?
She did. Stretching in that area releases oxytocin, which causes emotional bonding.
By July, the entire GOP will be proud, plump Trumplings.
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fed-audit
Unless something changes, I’ll vote for Bernie if he’s on the ticket.
I have less confidence that the too-big-to-fail, Ivy League educated Donald Trump will take Wall Street to task. I’m not as easily suckered as many other HBB posters apparently are.
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”
…
ow the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
They do like calling themselves the “Lender of Last Resort”.
Rand Paul has been the only candidate to openly and repeatedly call for an audit of the Federal Reserve, followed by shutting it down. Bernie Sanders sabotoged previous efforts to get a REAL audit of the Federal Reserve by submitting a watered-down version of a Ron Paul bill to the Senate.
Everybody has forgotten about Rand…. Even here. Libertarianism just doesn’t sell.
Rand has an unfortunately tendency to sell out, i.e. his endorsement of the corporate statist Romney in 2012. That kind of thing doesn’t go over well with the thinking 5%.
“Libertarianism doesn’t sell.”
It takes a lot of powerful thinking to overcome the indoctrination of government-run schools - 13 years of indoctrination, with five hours a day of watching the boob tube.
Despite that, people discover writings by 19th century libertarian’s such as Lysander Spooner, one abolitionist that public schools would never dare mention.
If it wasn’t for Ayn Rand’s novels, the libertarian ideas would take a lot longer to root. Not that I agree with everything Ayn Rand was for. She was a war monger.
Ease up on Ayn… she only advocated war as the natural means by which the strong take what is rightfully theirs from the weak.
You seem to consent to the overlords using force on the other ants to give you back your social security or Medicare once you are old enough because SS is broke. One ant, following the same trails to food found by others, walking in the tunnels built by others back to the hive, stands up and says “No more!”
Then continues to do the same stuff everyone else does.
I will give up on getting back what I paid in if you give up on getting back what you paid in.
Deal?
I’m not the one pretending like a 14 yr old that I can live in some utopian fantasy world. Your “voluntaryism” is no less utopian that the leftist Woodstock idiot hippies’.
Grow up and go find some love before it’s too late. Crowing about being a selfish miser borders on misanthropy.
I’m not pretending either. You are an idiot. I’m no leftist.
You refuse to even understand the meaning of voluntaryism. I keep saying that unless you are an order follower, you already live that philosophy 99% of your time. Dummy.
You grow up. I’m older than you I suspect. By at least 10 years. I’ve been around the block. Don’t write about me like you are a parent. I know what I’m doing. I’ve had relationships. Don’t tell me to have relationships.
I will tell you to go suck someone. Same insult. Go find Trump.
I cannot imagine what type of nut would tell someone to get into a relationship. It’s the same as telling someone to become a Democrat, or to read the silly bible.
Relationships are optional. They are not important to live life.
Been there, done that, had some fun along the way. I freakin could not care less anymore. I don’t do any games. I don’t lie to a woman to get her to do what I want.
Bill, I am trying to do you some good. You’ve said here before you are about 56. You are deeply depressed and lonely. And you have recently disclosed health problems. Counting some miserly hoard is bad for both. As is pretending that the childish voluntaryism movement is rational.
Go find love.
Finding love is the beginning of a herd. It’s just a herd of two.
” You are deeply depressed and lonely”
Ben Jones - please TOS this nut. He does not know me.
Who is the guy with Joshua Tree? Does it work in Explorer? I have some nutter to add to the list of filters.
I see all of that nut’s posts are disappeared, only to leave the nutter’s name. If he changes his screen name I will find soon enough and add that to the list of blocked nuts.
Good luck with Joshua Treeing ten different constantly changing screen names!
Yeah I figured that. I have to always use Selfish Hoarder. It’s fitting. I have to thank Janet for that.
How are banks supposed to make money if selfish hoarders can live off their savings instead of having to constantly borrow money whenever they need to buy something?
I posted a photo of a blank Shift debit card on my timeline on FB. A well-read Voluntaryist friend who was into bitcoin did not know there was a debit card. He was mentioning he could not find a reason to transact in bitcoin vs. the USD. Now he knows. He signed up for his Shift debit card today.
Sometimes even well-read people you agree with don’t have some of the info you have. It is always good to communicate to others. He will show his wife his debit card, and his colleagues. Word spreads.
Bernie needs the bubbles to even bigger. Of course he sabotaged a meaningful audit.
Can you be specific on how his bill was watered down. Seems like of all the candidates running he has been the most vocal and most consistent on the way the FED and the elite are stripping wealth from the middle class
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fed-audit
Barnie wants to confiscate 90 percent, he’s the original Lola.
Sounds to me like the Sanders bill was more focused on the bailout possibly to get something past. This is the best info I could find and it’s on the Ron Paul Web site
http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-10-08/ron-paul-and-bernie-sanders-audit-the-federal-reserve/
Ron Paul: Bernie Sanders sold out on Fed audit (and showed his true colors despite the populist rhetoric).
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/96587-ron-paul-says-bernie-sanders-qsold-outq-on-fed-amendment
It’s great to have at least some candidates who are willing to raise issues that the bought and sold out candidates won’t (I’m thinking of Bernie Sanders as another one doing this).
Trump vs. Bernie would be quite an election.
Base vs. Base
Sanders per the Guardian
1. Remove bankers from the FED. CEO’s of banks being bailed out by the FED shouldn’t sit on the FED
2. He wants the Fed to oblige financial institutions to invest in the “productive economy”, forcing them to focus on lending money to businesses and consumers.That could be achieved by prohibiting commercial banks from “gambling with the bank deposits of the American people”,
3. Full audit of FED
For Sanders, one way forward is to mandate that full transcripts of the meetings of the federal open market committee, which determines the direction of monetary policy, be published within six months of deliberations, not five years under the current system.
“If we had made this reform in 2004, the American people would have learned about the housing bubble well in advance of the financial crisis,” he argued.
Sanders ultimately wants more regulation beyond the Fed, limiting what commercial banks can do with their customers’ money and breaking up the largest institutions that would threaten the economy if they collapsed.
But, starting with the Fed, he warned: “The sad reality is that the Federal Reserve doesn’t regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates the Fed. It’s time to make banking work … for all Americans, not just a handful of wealthy speculators.”
What specifically has Trump proposed saying he would prevent bubbles isn’t enough. What has he proposed?
“FOCUS”
BOF’us?
Housing bubble implosion 2.0 dead ahead.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/12087971/UK-house-price-crash-looms-as-global-asset-prices-unravel.html
Obama’s legacy about to pop.
Same with the stock market.
The implosion is his legacy.
The implosion is his legacy ??
Yeah right…..
His legacy has been trying to mop-up the friggen catastrophe brought upon us by his predecessor…
“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” President Bush declared Thursday as he watched the $700 billion bailout package….
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDnOfu05_KAhWM5SYKHUN2AN8QFggkMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2008%2F09%2F26%2Fbusiness%2F26bailout.html&usg=AFQjCNGJda1lDzJgBdEiknDvtHO8w1v0hQ&bvm=bv.111396085,d.eWE
The janitor thing is a fantasy. Judge the tree by its fruit. The mess is only bigger.
The mess is only bigger ??
Yeah only got bigger because of the cancer that Bush left on the country…Now you want to blame the doctor for not arresting the cancer…
In July 2007 the federal funds rate was 5.25%…..just a few months later when Bush flew his A$$ back to Crawford the rate was almost cut in half…12 months later it was at zero bound…
If the mess is bigger its because the originator left us with a systemic problem…Worst President in our History and we may not make it out…
Oh a Doctor. What happened to the mopper upper? Obama did not improve our situation. He made it worse.
Mirror mirror on the wall. Who is the biggest deficit spending president of them all.
Why…. why it’s Barack Obama!
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
All of you are missing the point - you can’t see the forest through the trees. Blaming whichever puppet is in the white house is exactly what they want you to do.
Meanwhile, the globalist beat goes on . . .
The only question is - will Trump play along, or will he have a sudden heart attack?
The tree was cut down, chopped up, and set on fire. This is probably the last of the fruit.
At least Obama spared us four years of Hillary in the White House and the epic damage that would’ve caused the country. Although she’ll make up lost time starting in January 2017.
It can’t happen here in America!
Nobody is starving or standing in bread lines. Not even close. Our biggest health problem is obesity. Over abundance in all aspects of society, especially housing. Many of the poor live for free in middle class neighborhoods thanks to the magic of Section 8. They have smartphones and Netflix, which are incredibly cheap. Marijuana is readily available legally to pretty much anyone who cares to spend a 1/2 hour jumping thru a couple of hoops. Opiates are handed out like candy for all those on SSI for “back pain.” Same with happy pill psych meds. And almost anything you could want is available very cheap at Walmart of Target.
“Our biggest health problem is obesity. Over abundance in all aspects of society, especially housing.”
Supersized homes and waistlines are part of a pattern.
They have smartphones and Netflix, which are incredibly cheap
Cheap? A smart phone (the desirable kind, not one of those yucky Android phones) can cost $600. A monthly plan with data can cost $70 a month. Compare that to a land line that costs ~$35 a month and which can work with a $10 phone.
Landlines don’t crash during emergencies and high call volumes, either.
No need for data, McDonalds and Starbux have wifi. Are you seriously contending that they don’t have smartphones? Do you ever leave the home? Go to Walgreens or CVS, incredible variety of cheap smartphones.
And they’re getting cheaper. Data rates have been halved then some, android phones are under $100.
Again…… Nothing raises the standard of living and accelerates the economy like falling prices. Nothing.
Learn it or die.
Landlines (I still have mine, copper pair even, backed up by a massive building one block from here that is filled with lead-acid batteries with a giant generator outside of it) are great, but they are all going away (the last vestiges of the Ma Bell system) in 2018.
Just like you can’t fight the Fed, you can’t fight the forced change in technology. Cell phones are great, but without AC power, forget it - some tower sites do have generators with 2-3 days’ worth of fuel. In an extended power outage, our current cell phone system is far less viable than the ol’ Ma Bell system which had a much better backup power system.
“Just like you can’t fight the Fed”
Are you sure?
In an extended power outage, our current cell phone system is far less viable than the ol’ Ma Bell system which had a much better backup power system.
There was an issue with the backup generators here in Eastern Seattle a few years ago. The generator power was running low (nat gas, I think? oil?) and the trucks couldn’t get there to refill. Sammamish or Issaquah lost their 911 system for a time as a result.
The corrupt, co-opted Establishment GOP “elites” have their panties in a twist about the rise of Trump and rejection of their Hollow Man candidates like Jeb and Rubio.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/09/new-york-times-over-tea-and-pastries-gop-elites-whine-about-peoples-coup/
Kasich had a nice townhall in New Hampshire the other day, he’s too boring and sensible to poll above 2%
I was not aware of Kasich until he declared as a candidate. Unfortunately he comes across (at least to me) as smug and self-satisfied. When he first took the stage, it seemed to me that he slithered or oozed onto it, much like Romney.
Like JEB!, his connection to Lehman was another strike against him.
The problem with that old school “sensible” approach is that it assumes honest brokers trying to fix problems through truthful reasonable compromise. Someone like that gets eaten by the sharks and snakes.
This is how much the average American investor made last year
By Jessica Marmor Shaw
Published: Jan 8, 2016 1:18 p.m. ET
Visual Capitalist
Average investor performance by region in 2015, according to data from Openfolio.
How’d your portfolio perform last year?
All you had to see was a 1% rise on the year to beat the S&P 500 SPX, (-1.08%), which ended 2015 down 0.7% to snap a three-year winning streak.
But, judging from this Visual Capitalist chart based on data collected by Openfolio, a site on which investors share information about themselves and their investments, most Americans didn’t meet that low threshold. Only one-third of investors made money on the year, according to Openfolio, and the average American lost 3.1%.
There are some notable regional differences in this data, too: perhaps not surprising, given it’s the seat of Wall Street, the Northeast did the best over 2015 with an average decline of 1.7%. More interesting: The Southeast did the poorest.
…
We’re all red states now.
The Most Important Message in the December Job Figures
Friday’s employment report from the Labor Department, which showed that the U.S. economy added nearly three hundred thousand jobs in December, is obviously good news. Coming after a spate of China-inspired turmoil in the financial markets this week, it confirms that the U.S. economy, now in the sixth year of a recovery from the Great Recession, is still expanding steadily.
To repeat something that I’ve often said, it’s important not to get too exercised about one month’s figures. The jobs number from the Labor Department’s payroll survey, which most people focus on, comes with a large margin of error (about ninety thousand jobs) attached to it, and it’s subject to seasonal adjustments that can go awry, especially when the weather is weird, as it often is these days. To get a more reliable picture of what’s happening, it’s a good idea to look at two or three months’ worth of figures together, taking account of the latest revisions, and also to inspect the numbers in the other half of the jobs report, which come from a household survey carried out by the Census Bureau for the Labor Department.
If you do this, you will find that December’s payroll figure wasn’t a fluke. During the last quarter of 2015, employment growth averaged two hundred and eighty-four thousand jobs a month, up from about two hundred thousand in the previous nine months. Some of the acceleration might be a statistical artifact of the unusually mild winter, so far, in the eastern United States, which has probably led to fewer layoffs than usual in construction and other seasonally affected businesses. But it also reflects steady growth in household income and consumption, which is bolstering demand in such industries as autos, entertainment, and travel. (For Detroit, 2015 was a banner year, with overall car sales likely to break the record of 17.35 million, set in 2000.)
The most encouraging, and most important, job-market numbers are contained in the household survey. They suggest that some of the many people who dropped out of the labor force during and after the Great Recession, because they had given up hope of finding work, are finally returning to the labor force and securing employment. That’s great news for those folks, who bore the brunt of the recession, and it’s also good news for the rest of us. It means that the economy can grow faster, and for longer, without encountering the problem of rising inflation. And that, in turn, suggests that the Federal Reserve can afford to go slowly in raising interest rates, despite rapid job growth.
Over the past few years, I’ve written several times about the dropouts from the labor force, suggesting that there might be as many as six million of them. Other estimates are smaller, but whatever the actual figure is, it’s a large one, as indicated by the slow growth in the labor force—people working or actively looking for work—and a sharp decline in the labor-force participation rate. (That’s the percentage of the non-institutionalized working-age population that is working or seeking employment.) Between December, 2007, when the Great Recession began, and September of last year, the participation rate fell from sixty-six per cent to a historic low of 62.4 per cent. That fall was much too large to be explained by demographic trends, such as the aging of the baby boomers. It also reflected fallout from the economic slump.
Now, at long last, there are signs that things are changing. In the last three months of 2015, according to figures drawn from the monthly household survey, almost a million people—nine hundred and sixty-six thousand of them, to be more precise—joined the labor force. That was more than the growth over the previous twelve months combined, which was seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand. Reflecting the recent surge, the labor-force participation rate has picked up a bit, rising from 62.4 per cent in September to 62.6 per cent in December.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-most-important-message-in-the-december-job-figures
Immigrants in the Workforce, State by State and Industry By Industry
January 7, 2016
Shifting demographics nationwide are changing the face of American employment. Immigrants make up 13 percent of the population and 17 percent of the workforce,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/…/immigrants-workforce-state-state-industry-industry - 388k -
Dem lazy benefit scarfing rapist anchorbabies are takin all or jorbs!
Don’t be a Lola.
Obama Touts ‘Road to Socialism’ Auto Bailout in Weekly Address
Breitbart | Jeff Poor - January 10, 2016
Our plan wasn’t popular. Critics said it was a “road to socialism,” or a “disaster” waiting to happen. But I’d make that bet again any day of the week. Because today, the American auto industry is back. Since our plan went into effect, our automakers have added more than 640,000 new jobs. We’ve cut the Detroit-area unemployment rate by more than half. The Big Three automakers are raising wages. Seven years ago, auto sales hit a 27-year low. Last year, they hit an all-time high.
comments
caesar • 3 hours ago
He bailed the UNIONS out not the auto industry.
Bunkerbound American • 2 hours ago
Chrysler was given to Fiat as repayment for the millions of dollars given by Italian unions for Oblame-a’s 2008 election campaign. (All done through untraceable internet donations).
Rick caesar • 3 hours ago
Correct. Union wage’s might have gone up but every one Else’s have stagnated or gone down. I have an AAS degree as a Heavy Equipment Mechanic and I’m a certified Welder Fabricator and I’m making two dollars less an hour then I was making before the 08 crash. On top of that our money has much less buying power then it did in 08. So I’m really making less then the two dollars an hour. Its bull shit. my education cost a lot of money, and I have a good $22000.00 invested in my tools and tool box’s. F$#k the union’s. I’m proud to be non union. I know a lot of union pricks, They are the laziest workers I’ve ever seen.
aLittleSlapandTickle Rick • 2 hours ago
You, Sir, are the backbone of America and thus, are to be screwed.
johnnymule • 2 hours ago
Cut the half Detroit area unemployment rate by more than half?! You arrogant ass. Detroit is a BANKRUPT rat’s nest. The unemployment rate is half because half the population left the area for jobs elsewhere and where ever the population went they drag the gang jobs of distributing illegal drugs and murder and violence and crime in general right along with them. Your corporate interest have ran the agriculture business in the dirt…Family farms are practically non existent. You’ve opened our borders to millions of illegals who are not only a burden on the American tax payer but ake up what there are of jobs. You insult us Barry, you think we are all that stupid.
So you copied and pasted some lies and anti-union corporate propaganda.
“So you copied and pasted some lies and anti-union corporate propaganda.”
Do you get time-and-a-half on Sundays?
“So you copied and pasted some lies and anti-union corporate propaganda.”
Detroit Census Confirms a Desertion Like No Other
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYEMARCH 22, 2011
The number of people who vanished from Detroit — 237,500 — was bigger than the 140,000 who left New Orleans.
“It’s a major city in free-fall,” said L. Brooks Patterson, the county executive of neighboring Oakland County, which was also hit by the implosion of the automobile industry but whose population rose by almost 1 percent, thanks to an influx of black residents. “Detroit’s tax base is eroding, its citizens are fleeing and its school system is in the hands of a financial manager.”
The reasons for Detroit’s losses over the last decade include the travails of the auto industry and the collapse of the industrial-based economy.
“There’s been an erosion of the nation’s industrial base, and this is the most dramatic evidence of it,” Mr. Beveridge said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23detroit.html -
Demographic and Labor Market Profile: Detroit City
milmi.org/…/2343_Detroit_City_Demographic_and_Labor_Mkt_Profile.pdf - Cached - Similar pages
Since 2010, the population in the city of Detroit has continued to drop.
How about the claim that Italian unions donated to Obama’s campaign in 2008? Is there any proof of that? Do you care whether there is any evidence?
Obamas failed presidency is predicated on many failures.
Once you have a conclusion, evidence is superfluous.
Why did Obama ignored the poor for 8 years?
“How about the claim that Italian unions donated to Obama’s campaign in 2008? Is there any proof of that? Do you care whether there is any evidence?”
Looking at the comment and the articles below I would have to say there is not even a smidgen of corruption in that claim. It is obviously a phony scandal.
Labor unions rethinking their role in politics
March 10, 2012|By Matea Gold and Melanie Mason, Washington Bureau
A broader philosophical debate is also underway as union leaders discuss whether they can afford to invest the estimated $400 million overall that organized labor spent on Obama and congressional Democrats four years ago.
articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/10/nation/la-na-labor-endorse-20120311 - 76k -
Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign
Monday, 29 Sep 2008 09:23 PM
More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.
But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.
Foreign Donations
And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.
The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $3.38 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” which the FEC often uses as an abbreviation for “information requested.” Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Obama-fundraising-illegal/2008/09/29/id/325630/#ixzz3wsheYujW
So the answer is no, there is no evidence of funds from Italian unions. The facts don’t matter.
“So the answer is no, there is no evidence of funds from Italian unions.”
Of course there is.
“The facts don’t matter.”
“What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?”
I seem to recall that as part of the BK deal that starting UAW pay was cut in half.
$14/hr.
Sean Penn interviews El Chapo for Rolling Stone.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109?page=18
No, this is not the Onion.
If Penn was the reason they found his hideouts, Penn’s days might be numbered.
And what I find telling is that the Mexican government is so afraid of handling this human hot potato that the’re tossing him straight over the border, correctly figuring that the likelihood of a prison escape is much lower if he is north of the border.
We’ve already seen how much power this guy has - you can just imagine the threats that were made against the families of those guys that dug him out the last time. You don’t say ‘no’ to El Chapo.
Guns now allowed in Texas’ state-run psychiatric hospitals
Licensed gun owners can now bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state psychiatric hospitals.
Until this year, guns were banned at the state-run facilities, which house people with serious mental illnesses. No one — visitors, delivery people and the like — could bring firearms anywhere on the hospitals’ campuses. Even local law enforcement officers, who were allowed to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly lock up their guns before entering Austin State Hospital out of an abundance of caution. That isn’t expected to change.
But state officials say two new laws made it clear to them that they can’t keep guns off the hospitals’ campuses. The open carry law allows gun license holders to openly carry their firearms. A second law fines state agencies for wrongly hanging “no guns” signs.
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/guns-now-allowed-in-texas-state-run-psychiatric-ho/npztT/
May the patients soon have their second amendment rights restored as well. These people have been oppressed, imprisoned, and forcibly fed mind altering chemicals for far to long. It’s time for them to take up arms and rid themselves of this repressive regime!
Spain is too big to be bailed out. Eurozone crisis not so “contained.”
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/01/10/emerging-market-meltdown-sinks-spains-biggest-companies/
Sunday funnies from TBP. Enjoy!
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/01/10/sunday-funnies-95/
Political Correctness is Tyranny.
Your average social justice warrior would last about 5 minutes under sharia.
Getting raped is a good way to “check your privilege”
With “friends” like these, what could go wrong in 2016?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-naive-arrogant-saudi-prince-is-playing-with-fire-a6804481.html
Be careful what you say to your doctor.
Thought Police
From Wikipedia
For the Soviet Union’s State Political Directorate, see Operation Trust.
For the pre-war Japanese Special Higher Police, see Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu.
For enforcement of politically correct speech, see Political correctness.
The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of the fictional superstate, Oceania, in George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Orwell’s Thought Police are charged with uncovering and punishing “thoughtcrime” and thought-criminals. They use psychological methods and omnipresent surveillance (such as telescreens) to search, find, monitor, and arrest members of society who could potentially challenge authority and the status quo—even if only by thought—hence the name Thought Police.[1] They use terror and torture to achieve their ends.
Orwell’s concept of “thought policing” derived from and had much to do with his own “power of facing unpleasant facts”, as he referred to it, and his willingness to criticize society’s prevailing ideas—which often brought him into conflict with others and what he called their “smelly little orthodoxies”.[2]
Astonishingly, most of Orwell’s science fiction has become today’s technological reality.
We now have wall-mounted, internet-connected Smart TVs with built-in cameras and microphones that the NSA (or Russian hackers) can use to look right into your living room, just like Orwell predicted in 1947.
Ain’t progress grand?
crushing.housing.losses.
Mclean, VA Housing Prices Crater 17% YoY As Defaulted Housing Inventory Balloons
http://www.movoto.com/mclean-va/market-trends/
I’m busy watching a million dollar listing los angeles marathon.
Prices seem a wee bit high down there.
Any thoughts on why everyone is so bearish?
Bearish is the new black.
“You know I’m bad…I’m bad…you know it.”
Why is everyone so bearish?
Published: Jan 10, 2016 12:34 p.m. ET
By Avi Gilburt
When I read many of the comments to columns I see posted, the pervasive bearishness is quite striking, whether it is negative about the economy, the market, or just simply overall negative. This applies whether the columns themselves are positive or negative, or whether the site is overall positively or negatively bent.
In my experience, it seems to be that the public (or at least those within the public that post comments) leans bearish much of the time. The only time you see them being bullish is about metals, and the only reason they are bullish metals, is because they think everything else around them is bearish and negative. Why is that?
As one who has always attempted to view markets from an unbiased perspective to determine what the next bigger move will be, it almost seems as though I am fighting an uphill battle whenever I determine we should be looking up in the stock market or down in the metals market. Whenever I write a bearish market column, I see a large number of posts in support of my perspective. But when I write a bullish market column, I am derided and demeaned by posts of how I don’t know what I am talking about since the market is clearly going to crash.
Let’s face it folks; bearishness sells. Bearishness seems to be what the public wants to see in print. Have you ever wondered why?
Focusing on the negative
Is there an old-timer to whom you have spoken lately who has not mentioned how things were “better back in the day?”
If one were to seriously consider history, on just about every metric, the world is in far better shape than almost any time in history. In fact, one of my favorite rides at Walt Disney World in Florida is the Carousel of Progress, and it was rumored to be Walt’s favorite as well. That ride presents how we have technologically progressed through the 20th century, and one cannot deny those significant progressions from a period of time before electricity.
While we are very concerned about war and terrorism today, are we any worse than World War I, World War II, our own Civil War, etc.? We gripe about wages, poverty, and the value of the dollar, but poverty is at historic lows, and the poor have things today that rich people couldn’t dream about 100 years ago. As much as we complain about our current health-care system, do you recognize the leaps and bounds we’ve taken in the past 100 years in medicine/health/science? Are we now living longer or shorter lives than we were 100 years ago?
From my perspective, we have clearly been on a long term path of progression. While we certainly have experienced periods of regressions, overall, we seem to have historically been on a positive path. Yet, most seem to only focus upon the negative regressions. Why?
Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of social psychology at Florida State University, captured the idea in the title of a journal article he co-authored in 2001, “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” which appeared in The Review of General Psychology.
In that article, he explained that those who are “more attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased the probability of passing along their genes … Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes but less urgent with regard to good ones.”
This seems to cause man to become hyper-focused on the negative, which is driven by his innate desire to survive. Furthermore, when we consider that fear is the strongest emotion generated by our brain stem, we can develop a negativity loop that drives us to continually focus upon the negative by our strongest natural tendencies.
Now, we have a better understanding as to why fear or bearishness sells. Our innate tendencies seem to drive us in that direction, despite all the empirical data to the contrary. While our innate tendencies seem to have been pre-programmed within our brain stems to assist man to survive in a life and death struggle, I am not sure such hyper-focused tendencies help us in all aspects of our current lives in which we clearly allow them to reign.
The herd mentality
Man also has a natural tendency for herding. And just as in our financial markets, such tendencies for focusing upon the negative, as well as herding, do not always serve an investor in a manner which is positive for their investment account. Rather, there are times when an investor has to fight their natural tendencies to avoid adverse effects upon their investment account. I have spoken about this general perspective a bit more in this recent column.
It is for this reason that we recognize that contrarian thinking is much preferred to “group think” when dealing with financial markets.
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seems like wall street went short and now are talking down the economy and stocks. Classic
Can anyone make sense of the bloodbath in Chinese stocks?
It can’t be due to correlation between the real economy and the stock market, because all the experts say this is virtually nil.
Jan 10, 2016 @ 05:53 PM
China’s Stock Market: How To Make Sense Of The Bloodbath
Ky Trang Ho
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
* The global stock markets may have overreacted as there’s relatively little foreign money invested in Chinese stocks.
* The correlation between China’s stock market and the economy is practically nil.
The bloodbath in China’s stock market started the New Year with excruciating pain. But investors must remember the news is always most despicable and nauseating at the bottom. Bull markets climb the proverbial wall of worry. Contrarian investors always say, especially for long-term investors, the best time to buy is when there’s blood on the streets including your own.
…
“A good chunk of the blame for the turmoil in China can be traced to factors that are unlikely to significantly reverse in the foreseeable future: an aging population, a labor shortage that grows worse with time, and reduced demand from other emerging market economies that have been hit hard by the collapse in oil and commodity prices,” says Ken Weber, president of Weber Asset Management in Lake Success, N.Y.
Weber added: “Because China represents a large share of global demand for industrial metals, food commodities and other basic materials, the world now has too much capacity – a problem that could persist for decades as advancing technology continues to turn scarcity into abundance.”
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Bernanke: Wouldn’t worry about China’s stock market
Monday, 5 Oct 2015 | 8:51 AM ET
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, weighs in…
lmao
The more china has to defend its currency the more FX reserves ( lots of treasuries) it will have to unload.
They are unloading at a good time, as the flight-to-quality sparked by the Chinese stock market panic has driven the price of Treasurys skyward once again.
In case this is not obvious, collapsing China growth is bullish for U.S. Treasurys, due to a strengthening dollar and falling long-term interest rates that accompany global economic growth collapse.
Could China possibly be faking its decline from 7.0 percent to 6.9 percent GDP growth in order to help it offload U.S. Treasurys into strength?
U.S. News
Bernanke: Subprime Mortgage Woes Won’t Seriously Hurt Economy
Thursday, 17 May 2007 | 10:34 AM ET
The Associated Press
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that he didn’t believe the growing number of mortgage defaults would seriously harm the economy, and also noted that banks share significant risks when financing private equity deals.
Facing criticism from members of Congress about lax regulation, Bernanke also promised that the Fed would do everything possible to crack down on abuses that have put millions of homeowners in jeopardy of defaulting on their mortgages.
“We at the Federal Reserve will do all that we can to prevent fraud and abusive lending and to ensure that lenders employ sound underwriting practices and make effective disclosures to consumers,” Bernanke said in remarks prepared for a financial conference in Chicago.
…
Soros says it’s the 2008 crisis all over again
Thursday, 7 Jan 2016 | 4:00 AM PT
Hedge fund billionaire George Soros is warning of another crisis in the financial markets.
Central banks can no longer control volatility: El-Erian
Friday, 8 Jan 2016 | 4:48 AM PT
Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz chief economic adviser, weighs in…
Kyle Bass: US down 10%-20% by year-end
Friday, 8 Jan 2016 | 9:42 AM PT
Discussing the size of China’s banking system, and the potential impact to U.S. markets from China pain, with Kyle Bass, Hayman Capital Management founder, and Marc…
Kyle Bass: “U.S. Stocks are not going up in 2016.”
That’s a pretty straightforward prediction. Any chance he is right?
Asian Stocks Sink With Oil as China Woes Tighten Grip; Yen Jumps
Emma O’Brien and Jonathan Burgos
January 10, 2016 — 2:51 PM PST
Updated on January 10, 2016 — 4:25 PM PST
Asian trading got off to a depressingly familiar start, with stocks, oil and commodity-linked currencies sliding as a renewed bout of China-fueled risk aversion stoked demand for haven assets.
With Japan closed for a holiday, shares in Sydney led the charge, falling for a seventh day as futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index broke below 1,900. South Africa’s rand tumbled more than 9 percent to a record low Monday, driving a selloff in high-yielding currencies that saw the Australian dollar retreat with the Korean won. U.S. oil extended losses at its lowest point since 2004 and copper futures declined. Investments regarded as offering more safety found support, with the yen climbing to a four-month high as gold resumed its advance. Treasury futures rose to their highest level since November.
The new year has kicked off with a bang as a renewed bout of volatility in Chinese markets sapped risk appetite globally, sending equities worldwide down the most in more than four years and hobbling commodities. While data Friday showed U.S. payrolls surged in December, the focus will likely return to China Monday after the country posted a record 46th monthly decline in producer prices and inflation remained at about half the government’s 2015 target at the weekend. For oil, the gyrations in China and concern over how its economy is being managed add to already existing concerns over a global glut.
“The market is concerned about China’s financial stability, with investors looking for more visibility about how the new foreign exchange regime is going to work,” Matthew Sherwood, head of investment strategy at Perpetual Ltd. in Sydney, which manages about $21 billion, said by phone. “People are also quite nervous about the Chinese economic outlook. China is certainly slowing on a very gradual path down. A lot of people are fearing a hard landing is in play, but that’s not our central scenario. There’s a lot of policy ammunition left in China.”
Stocks
The MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index slid 0.9 percent as of 9:23 a.m. Tokyo time, as Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index slumped 2.1 percent, sinking to its lowest level since July 2013 as mining stocks and energy producers drove declines. While Japanese indexes were closed for Coming-of-age Day, futures on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average got it, retreating 1.4 percent in Osaka.
The Kospi index in Seoul dropped 1 percent to its lowest level since September, while New Zealand’s S&P/NZX 50 Index slipping 0.8 percent, falling for a fifth day.
S&P 500 futures declined 0.9 percent in the first hour or so of Monday trading, dropping to 1,985.50 after the index sank 1.1 percent on Friday to bring its slump in the week to 6 percent, also its worst weekly performance since 2011.
In Hong Kong, futures also foreshadowed declines, with contracts on the Hang Seng and Hang Seng China Enterprises gauges falling at least 1.1 percent in trading at the end of last week. FTSE China A50 Index futures slipped 2.2 percent, while those on China’s CSI 300 Index dropped 0.6 percent.
The largest U.S. exchange-traded fund tracking Chinese shares retreated 13 percent last week, exceeding the 9.9 percent slide in the CSI 300. China cut trading short on two days last week as selloffs in equities triggered a new circuit breaker, that was then abolished. The yuan’s depreciation also fueled market anxiety.
“Chinese equities have had a tough start to the year. This has flowed around the globe, kneecapping equities, where valuations were already deemed to be stretched,” Mark Smith, a senior economist in Auckland at ANZ Bank New Zealand Ltd., said in a client note Monday. “A weaker inflation outlook and heightened market volatility has also swung the pendulum back to more policy support — our Chinese economics team now expect a further 200 basis points of reserve-requirement cuts over 2016 to counter deflation threats.”
…
ft dot com > World > Asia-Pacific >
China
Last updated: January 10, 2016 4:57 pm
China claims it has a ‘stable and healthy’ financial system
Tom Mitchell in Beijing
China’s financial system is “largely stable and healthy,” the country’s foreign exchange regulator said at the weekend in an effort to reassure global markets as investors braced for a possible resumption of last week’s market turmoil.
Attention is likely to focus on China’s central bank and its management of the renminbi this week, after the markets regulator appeared to stabilise last week’s stock sell-off by scrapping a controversial “circuit breaker” mechanism and extending a ban on share sales by large shareholders.
The renminbi fell 1.5 per cent against the dollar in onshore trading last week to Rmb6.59 — a sharp move for the carefully managed currency. Traders have largely ignored the central bank’s guidance that they should focus on the renminbi’s stability against a basket of 13 currencies rather than volatility against the dollar.
Offshore the renminbi fell 1.7 per cent against the dollar to Rmb6.68, widening the spread between the two rates to a record level. The gap implies that international investors are pricing in further weakening of the onshore rate. Before the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly devalued the currency in August, the two rates traded at virtually the same level.
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Economy The Outlook
Intervention by Beijing Is Worsening China’s Market Woes
Economy is open enough that Communist Party doesn’t fully control it, but leaders can’t resist meddling, exacerbating market turbulence
By Greg Ip and Bob Davis
Updated Jan. 10, 2016 1:12 p.m. ET
The convulsions in China’s stock and currency markets this past week fanned investors’ worst fears: The world’s second biggest economy is in trouble and the authorities are powerless to fix it.
The truth is less frightening, but still fraught. China is trying to shift economic growth to a slower, safer path, one less dependent on capital spending and debt. Chinese technocrats know that means opening to ever more market forces, but its ruling elite is still not willing to accept that loss of control.
China’s economy is now open enough that the Communist Party can’t simply state its preferred outcome and expect it to happen. Investors inside and outside the country now have a say, too. The result: As growth slows, its leaders repeatedly try to tame the accompanying market turbulence, often making matters worse. Whether that interventionist instinct ultimately derails the economy’s transformation is very much an open question.
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Markets Asia Stocks
China, Asian Markets Off to Shaky Start
Jitters flow back into Asian markets after steep losses in the U.S., Europe
By Chao Deng and Kate Geenty
Updated Jan. 10, 2016 8:36 p.m. ET
Shares in China fell sharply early Monday, following a global rout last week that centered on worries about the Chinese economy and falling yuan.
The Shanghai Composite Index fell 2.5% to 3106.99, while the Shenzhen Composite Index dropped 3.3% after a modest recovery from Friday.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 2.4% and a gauge of Chinese firms listed in the city fell 3.25%.
Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.8%, and South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.9%. Japan’s market was closed for national holiday.
Matt Felsman, a private wealth adviser at APP Securities, said investors remain concerned about China, falling commodity prices and geopolitical risks.
“The main issues remain a tsunami of negative psychology driven by growth concerns in the Chinese economy, crude oil prices plunging to 12-year lows reviving fears that indebted energy producers won’t be able to remain solvent, North Korea testing nuclear weapons heightening geopolitical worries, alongside Middle East tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
China’s stock market is off to a rocky start after the Shanghai Composite Index lost 10% last week. The mainland market, Shanghai and Shenzhen combined, lost as much as 7.4 trillion yen (US$1.1 trillion) Monday through Thursday, and twice shut early after volatile trading triggered a circuit breaker system.
Analysts and traders attributed gains Friday to building optimism about a steadying Chinese yuan and measures from Chinese authorities to quell volatility, including a suspension of a the circuit breaker system that exacerbated selling earlier in the week. The Shanghai Composite Index finished up 2% Friday, while the Hang Seng Index was up 0.6%.
U.S. and European stocks stumbled into the New Year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 6.2% last week, its worst-ever five day start to a year. The Stoxx Europe 600 fell 6.7%, its largest one-week percentage fall since 2011.
…
fastFT
Markets
China stocks plummet at Monday open
an hour ago
China equities fell across the board on Monday, despite a stable fix for the renminbi 15 minutes before the open.
The blue-chip heavy Shanghai Composite fell 2.3 per cent at the start of trade, extending its six-session loss to 12 per cent, while the tech-heavy Shenzhen Composite fell 3.2 per cent, extending its 2016 loss to 17 per cent.
The market no longer has a circuit breaker to stem the losses, so the market will either find a bottom and rebound, continue to fall, or get help from the “national team” of state-backed companies. No individual stock can fall more than 10 per cent, eliminating the scenario of a free-fall.
…
Industries | Sun Jan 10, 2016 8:32pm EST
China stocks fall at market open after weak Dec inflation data
Reporting by Nathaniel Taplin; Editing by Eric Meijer
SHANGHAI
Jan 11 China’s major stock indexes opened down on Monday after weak December inflation data was released at the weekend.
The CSI300 index fell 1.7 percent to 3,303.12 points at 1:28 GMT, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.7 percent to 3,131.85 points.
The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was down 2.2 percent, to 19,997.42 points.
China’s consumer inflation barely edged up in December while companies’ factory-gate prices continued to fall, adding to concerns about growing deflation risks in the world’s second-largest economy.
…
ft dot com >
Personal Finance >
Investments
January 8, 2016 12:22 pm
Retail investors pull billions out of global equity funds
Naomi Rovnick
BEIJING, CHINA - AUGUST 27: A Chinese day trader plays cards with others as he watches a stock ticker at a local brokerage house on August 27, 2015 in Beijing, China. A dramatic sell-off in Chinese stocks caused turmoil in markets around the world, driving indexes lower and erasing trillions of dollars in value. China’s government has implemented a series of top-heavy measures to manipulate a market turnaround including its fifth cut to interest rates since November. Concerns about the overall health of China’s economy remain amid data showing slower growth.
(Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The amount of money retail investors pulled out of global equity funds hit a five-month high this week, as wild gyrations in mainland Chinese stock markets sent financial shockwaves around the world.
Fund tracker EPFR’s weekly data, which is viewed as a proxy for worldwide retail investor buying and selling, showed $8.8bn flowed out of global equity funds in the seven days to January 6, the highest amount since the first week of September.
Meanwhile, investors retreated to the perceived safety of bond funds, which attracted a net $3.2bn.
This “caution was quickly justified as another spasm in Chinese equity markets rippled through global stock exchanges”, wrote EPFR research director Cameron Brandt.
Flows into China equity funds were positive overall, although EPFR ascribed this to Chinese government-backed financial institutions, known locally as “the national team”, trying to prop up the markets.
The Shanghai Composite Index slumped by 7 per cent on Monday, before the authorities shut the stock market early. It fell another 7 per cent on Thursday, leading to ructions across global markets. The FTSE 100 has lost 4 per cent this week, falling to 5,994 points on Friday. In the US, the S&P 500 suffered its worst four-day opening run in its history.
Analysts say this may have been an overreaction; while a steep fall in US or UK stock markets would signal economic stress, the Shanghai exchange is not exactly a reliable barometer of China’s financial health.
The Chinese industrial juggernaut is definitely slowing, with GDP now growing about 7 per cent, according to official figures, down from 10.4 per cent in 2010.
But share prices “say little about the direction of China’s economy”, said Louis Kuijs, a Hong Kong-based China expert at Oxford Economics.
Trading in Chinese markets is dominated by retail investors, colloquially known as “aunties”. They often have little financial expertise of formal education and trading in shares can be similar to gambling, with stocks bought and sold on the back of rumours, numerology or feng shui (Chinese media often quote the stock market predictions of feng shui practitioners).
Beijing agencies are also increasingly experimenting with methods of intervening in the market, often prompting more instability. This week, for example, the brand new practice of using circuit breakers to stem market falls was introduced and then abruptly abandoned after just four days.
There was another event in China this week, however, that captured less attention than the stock market upheaval but understandably spooked global investors.
The People’s Bank of China, which manages the renminbi by fixing its exchange rate each day, unexpectedly allowed the currency to weaken to more than 6.5Rmb to the US dollar for the first time in four years on Monday.
This signalled that the Chinese central bank is happy for the local currency to weaken further, analysts have said.
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The Wall Street Journal
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders now even in Iowa, New Hampshire
Published: Jan 10, 2016 9:28 a.m. ET
…
It would be nice to know that at least some Democrats refuse to vote for the corrupt status quo.
What you won’t hear from any other candidate but Rand Paul: audit the criminal private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve.
http://www.businessinsider.com/rand-paul-heres-why-we-should-audit-the-fed-2015-12
Bernie Sanders
United States Senator for Vermont
The Fed Audit
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”
…
Drumminj, I found a link for Joshua Tree. Guess I gotta go to Firefox.
Never mind. I added the nut to my list of blocked messages.
Drumminj rocks!
There’s a Chrome and Firefox version. The Chrome version is a better re-write of the FF version, so I’d recommend that (too lazy to port it back to FF).
Chrome link
FF Link
Enjoy!
There’s a whole lot of rent-free living around here lately.
Jus sayin
How’s that hope ‘n change working out for ya, ‘Murica?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-10/shared-sacrifice-1-3-americans-slash-staples-spending-afford-obamacare
Would a Republican in the White House repeal Obamacare?
So let me get this straight: American taxpayers are paying through the nose to retroactively insure people once they are too sick to qualify for private insurance?
Politics
Insurers Say Costs Are Climbing as More Enroll Past Health Act Deadline
By ROBERT PEAR
JAN. 9, 2016
WASHINGTON — Eager to maximize coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration has allowed large numbers of people to sign up for insurance after the deadlines in the last two years, destabilizing insurance markets and driving up premiums, health insurance companies say.
The administration has created more than 30 “special enrollment” categories and sent emails to millions of Americans last year urging them to see if they might be able to sign up after the annual open enrollment deadline. But, insurers and state officials said, the federal government did little to verify whether late arrivals were eligible.
That has allowed people to wait until they become ill or need medical services to sign up, driving up costs broadly, insurers have told federal health officials.
“Individuals enrolled through special enrollment periods are utilizing up to 55 percent more services than their open enrollment counterparts” who sign up in the regular period, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, whose local member companies operate in every state, told the administration.
…
It’s not really insurance if you can sign up after you get sick.
It’s thinly disguised welfare.
Look for alot more programs along these lines if Hillbilly gets elected.
Sick people should just die already. Getting sick means God does not like you.
“Sick people should just die already.”
That is way off topic.
I was talking about insurance systems, which don’t work if you open the door to extreme moral hazard, for instance by letting people who never paid in a dime sign up at the moment they expect to start filing claims.
Is China’s stock market rout finally over?
China stocks drop again, dragging Asian markets
By Chao Deng and Kate Geenty
Published: Jan 10, 2016 10:25 p.m. ET
Asian markets continue to slide after volatile week
AFP/Getty Images
China’s stock market is off to a rocky start after the Shanghai Composite Index lost 10% last week.
China shares slid Monday, and losses in other regional markets deepened, as a rout that knocked trillions of dollars off global stocks last week ricochets back to Asia.
The Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP, -2.40%) fell as much as 2.5% early Monday, and was last down 1.2% to 3148.47. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index (399106, -3.50%), last down 1.5%, fell as much as 3.3%.
Shares in Hong Kong sank to their lowest in roughly 2½ years. The Hang Seng Index (HSI, -2.45%) was off 2.4% at 19,958.31, on track to close below 20,000 for the first time since June 2013. A gauge of Chinese firms listed in the city fell 3.3%.
Australia’s benchmark (S&P/ASX 200 XJO, -1.34%) was down 1.8%, and South Korea’s Kospi SEU, -0.65% fell 0.9%. Japan’s market was closed for a national holiday.
Worries about weakness in the Chinese yuan and how authorities convey their market expectations continue to unnerve investors. Poorly telegraphed moves last week exacerbated volatility in China, and triggered selling that spread to the rest of the region, the U.S. and Europe.
Concerns about China’s stalling economy, with the yuan weakening 1.5% against the U.S. dollar last week, has sparked selling in commodities and currencies of China’s trading partners, and sent investors to assets perceived as safe.
“There’s no reason for Chinese stock to move up for now,” said Jiwu Chen, CEO of Shanghai-based VStone Asset Management, which manages around $2 billion.
…
China worries send oil prices tumbling
Published: Jan 10, 2016 11:27 p.m. ET
By Jenny W. Hsu
Crude prices fell more than 2% in early Asian trade Monday as volatility in the Chinese stock market and worries about the Chinese economy keep investors feeling bearish.
Regional stock markets also started the week lower. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 2.5% to 3106.99, while the Shenzhen Composite Index was 3.3% lower after a modest recovery on Friday.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 2.4% and a gauge of Chinese firms listed in the city fell 3.25%. Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.8%, and South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.9%. Japan’s market was closed for a national holiday.
Oil prices kicked off the new year last week in a slump. Prices were dragged by fears that the escalating tension in the Middle East will deter oil producers from cutting production. Prices sank further after the Chinese government last week allowed its currency to fall at a quicker rate than expected, sparking a rapid selloff in the stock market.
ANZ said concerns over the impact of a depreciating Chinese currency will keep pressuring commodity prices lower in the short term.
“The global glut issue has been around for a while. Right now, it is the fear of a Chinese slowdown that is spooking the market,” said Barnabas Gan, a commodity analyst at OCBC. “Most of the selling is based on emotions and panics,” he added.
News that the Saudi government may be considering an initial public offering for its state-run oil company is also dampening sentiment, he said.
Most analysts agree a price recovery is still a long way away but the more bullish ones believe prices are stabilizing amid signs of shrinking production.
According to industry group Baker Hughes, the U.S. oil-rig count, which is viewed as a proxy for drilling activity, fell by 20 to 516 in the latest week.
“The strong job data from the U.S. last week should help keep the prices from bleeding further,” said Daniel Ang, a Phillip Futures energy analyst, but noted a stronger greenback will also impede a rebound in crude prices.
For this week, traders will be taking their cues from the weekly U.S. crude inventory and production data and China’s December trade data. Both will be released on Wednesday.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in February traded at $32.41 a barrel at 0141 GMT, down $0.78 or 2.4% in the Globex electronic session. February Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.72 or 2.2% to $32.83 a barrel. Both grades have fallen over 11% this week so far.
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Chinese retail investors pummelled by wild market
Esther Teo
The Straits Times
Sunday, Jan 10, 2016
As Chinese stocks went into a wild meltdown last week, racking up painful losses for retail investors such as Dr Li Jianing, the Jilin native said he had only one thought in mind: never again.
“China’s stock market is one big casino,” he told The Sunday Times. “If you pick the right stock, there’s lots of money to be made, but I’m not confident of being able to do so any more. Once I regain my capital, I’m getting out of stocks for good.”
Chinese shares had their worst start in two decades, with sharp price falls triggering so-called circuit breakers twice last week. The mechanism - suspended on Friday - halts trade once losses reach a threshold of 7 per cent. On Thursday, it breached that mark in just 29 minutes, making it the shortest trading day in Chinese history.
The tumult sent global markets diving, wiping more than US$2.3 trillion (S$3.3 trillion) off share values last week, according to the Financial Times.
The Dow and S&P 500 had their worst five-day starts in history, falling 6.2 per cent and 6 per cent respectively for the week.
Dr Li, 46, who started out as a passive investor, was enticed to enter the market more aggressively after China’s market rout last summer.
Sensing opportunities for bargain buys, he ploughed 400,000 yuan (S$87,000) - money meant to pay off his home mortgage - into stocks in the hopes of a quick profit. He has since lost about 60,000 yuan.
“Who knew that the market had not bottomed out yet and that it would still experience such volatility, with the circuit breakers triggered twice in just a few days,” said Dr Li, a doctor from Changchun, northern Jilin’s capital city.
“The situation now is very frightening, especially as the 400,000 yuan I invested is not a small sum. It’s actually enough to buy an apartment,” he added.
Chinese retail investors, who drive more than 80 per cent of market transactions, are still reeling from the pummelling dealt to them by the market, with many venting their anger and frustration online, some humorously.
One user on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo, for instance, likened the market to a cheating boyfriend.
“You keep on trusting him and believing that everything will turn out fine. But he disappoints and hurts you and breaks another new record every time,” she wrote.
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Got extreme anger?
The anger of ordinary Chinese investors
8 January 2016 Last updated at 09:11 GMT
Trading was suspended twice this week in mainland Chinese markets, angering small investors, who blame the government for intervening in the markets.
They say they feel “trapped” and “robbed” of not being able to trade, after the market was abruptly shut.
Now authorities have abandoned the “circuit breaker” mechanism which automatically halts trading when the market rises or falls by more than 7% after critics said it increased volatility instead of calming investors.
The BBC spoke to ordinary Chinese investors in Shanghai to get their views.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Why China’s currency moves should not (but do) cause panic
January 11, 2016 - 3:00PM
Vanessa Desloires
Reporter
There are fears of another full-blown currency crisis after the ASX fell to a two-and-a-half-year low and the Aussie dollar plunged further off the back of turmoil in Chinese markets. John McDuling reports.
China’s enigmatic currency has had a hard time being pegged to a stronger US dollar, and the resulting market panic from its moves away from this peg may have been overblown, economists say.
The yuan fix rate, which the People’s Bank of China sets daily against the US dollar, was cut a cumulative 1.4 per cent over four session last week, relatively modest compared to August’s shock cut, when it devalued 2 per cent in one day. On Friday and again on Monday, the currency was set higher.
But the move last week sent markets reeling, with the Australian sharemarket shedding more than $100 billion in little more than a week, and the ASX and Wall Street posting their worst weeks in more than four years.
…
Markets | Sun Jan 10, 2016 10:44pm EST
Oil drops over 2 percent as China slowdown weighs; market loses faith in rebound
SINGAPORE | By Henning Gloystein
Crude oil prices fell over 2 percent on Monday as China’s economic slowdown dented the outlook for demand and traders are placing record bets on even lower prices as they increasingly lose faith in a significant market recovery.
Global benchmark Brent LCOc1 was down 89 cents, almost over 2.6 percent, to $32.66 per barrel at 0319 GMT (10.19 p.m. ET on Monday), and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 was down about 2.3 percent to $32.39.
Monday’s decline adds to last week’s more than 10 percent drop in both Brent and WTI prices to start the year. Traders and investors have wondered how long and deep the slide may go with Goldman Sachs saying oil could hit $20 a barrel.
Goldman analysts further said in a note on Friday that sustained lower prices are needed to in the first quarter “so producers will move budgets down to reflect $40 a barrel oil for 2016.”
Other oil market analysts are pointing to China’s slowdown, which saw a slide in the yuan and two emergency suspensions in stock trading markets last week, as the main reasons for lower oil and commodity prices.
“China macro trends to remain in the driving seat for commodities,” Singapore Exchange (SGX) said on Monday in its 2016 commodity outlook.
“With a slowing domestic economy, mounting deflationary pressures, rising capital outflows, growing credit risks, a continued nationwide anti-corruption drive and rising U.S. interest rates, there is perhaps plenty of scope for volatility to stage a return,” SGX said.
Oil market speculators have increased their net-short positions, which would profit from prices falling lower, to a record high in the week to last Tuesday, in a sign that they are losing faith in a price rise anytime soon, a weekly report from a U.S. government agency that tracks commodity markets activity showed on Friday (see graphic).
At the same time speculators have cut their net-long positions to fewer than 50,000 contracts, or the equivalent of 50 million barrels, according to the trading data. Longs are bets on higher prices, while shorts are wagers that the market will fall. The net position squares off the two.
Oil prices have already fallen over 70 percent since the downturn began in mid-2014 as soaring global production sees hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude produced every day without a buyer, leaving storage tanks filled to the brim.
Adding to overproduction is slowing demand, especially in China where growth has dropped to its lowest rate in a generation and experts see few signs of improvement for the next few years.
“Chinese oil data are finally starting to reflect weak economic activity. Implied oil demand in China contracted 4.9 percent (537.3 thousand barrels per day) month-on-month and 2.0 percent (216.7 thousand barrels per day) year-on-year in November, the first decline since July 2014,” Barclays bank said in a note late on Friday.
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Gas prices could drop toward $1 a gallon
Douglas A. McIntyre, 24/7 Wall St.
6:08 a.m. EST January 10, 2016
In some gas stations around the country, the price of a gallon of regular has dropped below $1.42. AAA and GasBuddy, two organizations that follow gasoline prices, say that gasoline prices below $2 will not be unusual in most of the United States. As oil prices fall, and refinery capacity stays strong, the price of gas could reach $1 a gallon in some areas, a level last reached in 1999. As a matter of fact, the entire states of Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Caroline have gas prices that average at or below $1.75.
Gasoline prices are driven mostly by four factors: oil prices, proximity to refineries, refinery capacity and state taxes and levies. Oil prices have dropped below $33 a barrel and continue to collapse. The recent decision by Saudi Arabia to continue to keep its oil exports high essentially has dissolved the OPEC cartel. The decision also has forced the kingdom to chop its 2016 budget. This ongoing supply glut guarantees oversupply of crude. At the same time, slowing national economies in the largest countries, including China, will lower demand. China now tops the list of oil importers, according to the Financial Times, having moved ahead of the United States.
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